


I Keep Going to the River to Pray

by HollowIsTheWorld



Series: Laurina Lavellan; Herald of Andraste (except for not) [2]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen, Post-Trespasser, Trespasser Spoilers, mentions of past solas/lavellan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-02
Updated: 2015-11-02
Packaged: 2018-04-29 16:02:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5133679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HollowIsTheWorld/pseuds/HollowIsTheWorld
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Travelling is different now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Keep Going to the River to Pray

**Author's Note:**

> Recommended listening - Ghost by Ella Henderson

Traveling is different now. All her life, Laurina had traveled with at least one or two members of her clan everywhere she went. Even when she had traveled to the Conclave she hadn’t gone alone. The two hunters who had gone with her had died, and she’d felt alone for the first time in her life, but she’d still always had someone with her. Cassandra first, to watch the ‘dangerous’ prisoner, then Varric and Solas, and soon after that all the other members of the Inquisition. There had always been _someone_.

  
But now she was no longer Inquisitor. She didn’t need to be guarded or make an impression.

  
Her friends were no longer ready and waiting on her order. Cole was learning and helping his way across Thedas with Maryden. The Iron Bull was back leading his Changers into who-knows-what. Dorian had returned to Tevinter where Laurina could only hope he was being careful. And Solas… Well. She didn’t like thinking about Solas.

  
She didn’t even fight like she had now. She was a mage, and a damn good one, so the loss of the majority of her left arm wasn’t as catastrophic as it could have been, but she couldn’t wield a staff the way she always had. She hadn’t yet gotten used to the weight difference either; how she had to hold herself differently to stay on her hart.

  
She could travel, and she did, but she no longer went into the thick of battle, and so no longer needed battle hardened fighters at her side. Down an arm or not, she could still throw fireballs with excellent precision; a fact she’d pointed out to Cullen when he had expressed concern at the prospect of her traveling alone. He’d seemed alarmed, as though he half-expected her to demonstrate, but had been reassured.

  
It had been months now since she’d disbanded the Inquisition and sent her companions off on their separate paths, but Laurina still couldn’t decide how she felt about traveling alone. After everything that had happened in the last four years she liked having the space to be alone with her thoughts, but at times those thoughts seemed to be threatening to swarm up and drown her inside her own mind.

  
She liked when her travels took her alongside running water. The gurgle of rivers or brooks or whatever else she came across was always a welcome background noise. Especially the river in the Emerald Graves. Something about the sounds, the smells, the _everything_ seemed to restore some small part of the home she’d lost.

  
And, even with the great bears and the giants and the wolves that roamed the Graves, the place somehow felt like the one place where the ghosts of her regrets weren’t circling around her campfire.

  
One day, when the sun was up and bright, and it would have been hot if it weren’t for the cool breeze rustling through the trees, Laurina set her schedule back a day and sat on the river bank. She pulled one knee up to her chest and rested her chin on it. She watched the water swirl through the currents. She was dimly aware of her hart grazing a short distance away, and there were birds chirping somewhere over head.

  
Her left foot was stretched out in front of her far enough that when the river splashed up just a little higher than usual it washed across her skin. It was cold, and might have been unpleasant if the weather was worse.

  
Solas had liked it here too.

  
The thought came unbidden and unwanted, the way thoughts of Solas always did now. He had spoken of how he wished he could have seen the life the old elves had made there. Laurina had shared the sentiment, although she now knew that they’d viewed the place from nearly opposite perspectives.

  
That had always been the way, hadn’t it? She hadn’t known it then, but while she and Solas had always seemed to be of one mind on things, just the opposite had been true. Same results, different paths.

  
Laurina pressed the palm of her one hand against her eyes, as though she could grind out the memory of what he’d looked like while they’d talked about the pleasant atmosphere of forests, and how they always seemed to be quiet and isolated, even if they were full of people and villages.

  
She’d dreamed of wolves again last night, and she didn’t know what to do about that.

  
Laurina shifted down the riverbank a short distance, until she was close enough to reach it with her fingers. There had been a time when she had prayed to the Creators in places like this. Now the very idea of doing so raised painful lumps in her throat and red-hot pinpricks behind her eyes.

  
She still loved him, that was the worst of it. She had learned during her time with the Inquisition that she could hate people with a intense fury that terrified her (there were a lot of anti-elf people in Thedas, she was now acutely aware of that fact) but she couldn’t make herself hate Solas. She wondered what her old Keeper would think of that. Wanting to be sick at the idea of the Creators, but being in love with the Dread Wolf himself. It would have been funny, if it hadn’t been breaking her heart.

  
She never was any good at controlling her emotions. Doing things in spite of her emotions, certainly, but if there was a knack to forcing herself not to feel something with every fiber of her being she hadn’t found it yet.

  
She swept her hand through the water, focusing a little. Tiny shards of ice formed on the surface before being swept away into the current. She’d never been terribly interested in ice magic, but she had to admit that it could be soothing.

  
She sighed and tilted her head back to look at the clouds.

  
The Emerald Graves were beautiful. If she could, she would stay there, and let the world do what it would in her absence.

  
But she couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. Whichever. She would see herself through whatever storm was coming. And if she had to stop every now and then and be by herself with rivers and trees and faint whispers of the past; well, nobody had to know that but herself. 


End file.
